


All Your Words Are Lies

by gracefulally



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefulally/pseuds/gracefulally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the night of the Hale House fire unfolds, Derek realizes that he's been living a lie since Kate entered his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Your Words Are Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trueloveburns](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=trueloveburns).



> written for a role play partner's meme prompt

Ozone, campfire, scorched textiles, and burnt meat — the mingled smell is revolting, and after a couple hours of endurance, Derek bolts into the woods and vomits in the underbrush. There’s a hand quickly on Derek's back, but Derek is too dazed to register if the person is trying to help him or interrogate him. He shoves away from the hands as he vaults forward, over a fallen limb, and starts running, all out. Bushes and trees whip past him, scratch his face and tear his clothes, but he always tugs himself free and keeps going, like he’s being chased and maybe, in a way, he is. The smell of his dead family has permeated most of the property, and he can’t escape the smoke, which has had time to spread out like a cloud in the sky, wafting this way and that while the ruined house continues to smolder, soaked with muddy water dropped on the Hale home by emergency choppers from the surrounding counties.

Nearly six hours have passed since Derek was approached during baseball practice by Deputy Stilinski. Five hours and fifty minutes have passed since the gravity of the situation hit him as they veered not toward his home, but the county hospital. Five hours and thirty minutes have passed since Derek was scrambling out of the Deputy’s car before he was running, cleats raking on the asphalt and concrete, to slam into Laura’s hold as she walked quickly out of the Emergency Room doors. Five hours, twenty nine minutes, and forty-two seconds have passed since Laura’s hollow voice uttered, “Mom didn’t pull through.” Fours hours have passed since the next-to-last victim of the fire perished at the hospital. Three hours and forty-seven minutes have passed since Laura was stalking out of a meeting with their uncle’s lead physician before she was telling Derek they were leaving. Three hours and forty minutes have passed since Laura’s eyes were flashing red for the first time — when Derek was asking where they were going because Laura took the wrong turn, heading away from the county sheriff’s office. Three hours and twenty minutes have passed since Derek first caught the scent of fire. Three hours and twenty-five minutes have passed since Laura was gunning the Camaro up the drive at Hale property, flying past a half-dozen deputy and state police cars, two fire trucks, and a local news van, and coming to an abrupt halt to keep from taking out a police barricade. Exactly three hours have passed since Laura, after arguing with and shouting at the Fire Marshall for nearly fifteen minutes straight while two officers held her back from going into the burning house, collapsed into a weeping heap as the second fire containment chopper was passing overhead. Two and a half hours have passed since another deputy walked Derek to a black SUV and presented him with a change of clothes and shoes. Two hours have passed since Laura shutdown, going mute as Derek frantically tried to give her signals that they should check the grounds themselves. Just a half hour has passed since teams started entering the house to put out the last of the fire.

Derek leaps through the branches of a couple overgrown evergreens and skids to a stop at the edge of a pond. He pants softly as his eyes sting with heat and then he’s grabbing for handfuls of his hair and spinning deliriously to stumble on his normally poised feet. This is a fucking nightmare. This is hell. This doesn’t make any sense. How — why is this happening? No one could answer when he’d asked and asked and asked while he was back at the house. They didn’t know a damn thing. They wouldn’t know until they could get inside. Peter is in a coma. Laura is mentally crippled. And everyone else — his family, the people he actually loved and cared about, are gone. His parents — his mom, his Alpha — are dead.

Choking on a sob, Derek’s entire body heaves with every breath. He’s then pawing at himself because these clothes are too big and have swallowed his phone. When he whips the flip-phone out and snaps the lid open, he punches at numbers he knows and then puts the phone to his ear. The phone rings and rings and rings, but no one ever answers nor does the machine pick-up.

Derek is running, again. He grips the phone and sprints for the edge of the forest and the road that leads back into town. When he gets to the newly renovated apartment complex located on the outskirts, he looks for Kate’s car, but isn’t discouraged when it’s not there. He heads to her door, and at first, he pounds on the heavy faux-wood and then, he remembers the doorbell, which he lays on multiple times.

“Come on,” Derek seethes as he begins to panic. He needs to see Kate, and he needs to see her now.

There’s a dull rip, thunk, and crack when Derek pops the door and rushes inside. His phone clatters to the hardwood floor. It’s a furnished apartment, but he knows something’s wrong. All the random things she’d hung on the walls and the few trophies she’d set out in the living room are missing, along with the television. Was she robbed? Did something happen to Kate, too?

Derek is frantic as he searches the apartment, shouting her name, and finds room after room emptied of everything personal. He checks the bedroom last. Though the room smells strongest of Kate, he knows she’s not here and neither are her things, not even her clothes. Kate is gone.

Head throbbing with ache, Derek sinks onto the edge of the bare mattress. He doesn’t understand what is happening. His thoughts are spinning, and he grips his head, tries to think. This is bad, and he should report that Kate is missing. She couldn’t just leave, not after what she’d said last night when he left, later than normal, which had sent his mother into a rise when he actually got home, but Derek was positively giddy all night because Kate loves him.

Picking up the phone on the nightstand, Derek dials emergency. He clears his throat and ducks his head, mopping at his face as he nearly babbles his name and chokes on the word before getting out a soft cough. “Yeah — uh — I-I need to report a missing person.” He stammers through part of a conversation before the glint of something catches his eye as the moonlight shifts and falls on the closet. "Can you - I'm sorry - just a minute…," Derek says as he sets down the phone and takes two strides over to the closet doors and throws them apart. He stares, unblinking, at the symbol on boot knife lying at his feet. He kneels and reaches for the knife, but stops short, already feeling the tingle of repulsion in his skin from what he knows is a mountain ash-infused handle.

“Shit,” Derek breathes as he skitters back on his hands, rolling and raising up with his claws and teeth coming out on instinct. His eyes flick quickly around him as if he knows he’s prey.

Is this for real? Is this — is she — was everything a lie? How was it even possible? Is this — is this why she refused to give him a key? To meet his family? Told him that he was special?

There’s bile rising in Derek’s throat, and he huffs for breath with a retching sound. Kate — his girlfriend, she was — holy shit.

Is this empty apartment a setup, too? Is she waiting for him? Why wouldn’t she want to kill them all? Why, how could she do this? Wasn’t there a damn code? A treaty, even?

The knife — Derek would know that symbol anywhere. His mother had drilled the patterns into his head as a boy. That was a hunter’s knife — a hunter’s knife in Kate’s room — a hunter’s knife in Kate’s room, forgotten when she ran on the night that his family was killed.

Derek dashes out of the apartment, abandoning the phone in the bedroom and completely missing his cell phone in the entryway. He flees back toward the Hale property and as soon as he knows he’s within earshot, he pauses and lets out a soaring howl. Laura doesn’t respond, but she meets him with the Camaro at the turn at the end of their driveway. Derek dives into the car and gasps for breath.

“Laura, I…,” Derek begins before the crack of sobs creep into his voice. “This is my fault, Laura.”

Stony silent, Laura punches the gas and the Camaro peels away toward the moonlit horizon.


End file.
